This invention relates to the manufacture of cards with electrostatic protection where the cards include a metal layer.
The term “card” or “cards” as used herein, and in the appended claims, is intended to include a large variety of documents and instruments such as transactional (financial or credit) cards, identification (including National ID or Driver's License) cards, electronic passport pages, gift cards, documents for holding permanent and long lasting records such as medical records or security cards, or other cards used for promotion of a product or organization.
The manufacture of cards formed solely of a metal layer is known. These cards are intended to provide an indication of status and/or bestow a degree of prestige to the user. However, they are generally much more expensive to manufacture than the ubiquitous “plastic” cards.
Due to the prestige associated with the metal cards, it has become desirable to many users to have a “metal” card. However, the cost of manufacturing metal cards makes it uneconomical and hence undesirable in many applications. As a compromise, Applicant proposed in co-pending application titled Combination Card of Metal and Plastic bearing Ser. No. 13/135,139 the making of cards which include at least one metal layer and at least one plastic layer. Such a card, which may be referred to herein and in the appended claims as a “hybrid-card”, is generally cheaper to make than a pure metal card and would also have some advantages such as the ease with which information may be formed on the plastic layer including the magnetic stripe, hologram and signature panel.
In co-pending application Ser. No. 13/135,139, Applicant addressed and resolved some of the major problems which exist in the manufacture of a hybrid card (i. e., one having a metal layer and a plastic layer) since the normally different responses of the plastic and metal layers to temperature and stress tend to cause the card to warp and/or delaminate. Consequently, the manufacture of hybrid cards is more attractive.
In brief, it is desirable to have or to make “metal” or “hybrid” cards; where the “metal” cards are either wholly or mostly comprised of metal and the “hybrid” cards include at least one metal layer and one plastic layer.
However, there are significant problems with the handling of metal and hybrid cards and their use in point of sale (POS) equipment. The presence of any metal layer may cause an ESD event or a short circuit. It is known that electronic circuitry in point of sale (POS) devices, used to execute financial transactions, are sensitive and susceptible to electro-static discharge (ESD) events caused by the transfer of electrostatic charge from the card-holder and financial transaction card to the POS device itself. In fact the problem of electrostatic discharge is known to plague the Credit/Debit card industry
The presence of any metal on the financial card increases the likelihood of such an ESD event. The ESD type of event can reset or damage the electronics in the POS device. Due to this phenomenon, a metal card or any card containing a metal layer of virtually any thickness [e.g., greater than 0.001″ thick] can lead to catastrophic failure of the POS device or any like device in certain environments (e.g., cold, low humidity environments).
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to manufacture metal cards and or hybrid cards (i.e., cards having at least one metal layer and at least one plastic layer) with electrostatic discharge and/or short circuit protection.
In the discussion to follow, including the appended claims, reference is made to metal layer(s) for ease of reference. It should be understood that the metal layer may be any layer of electrically conductive material, as is normally the case with metals.